I am however a father now, and time is scarce. We haven’t had a session of this campaign in a while, but I do have several sessions recorded that I also haven’t released yet. Unfortunately I don’t have both sides of the latest session, which is quite disheartening (if for no other reason than it will be harder to pick up once we get back into it).

I’ll try and gather the party again in the new year and finish what we began. Hopefully you’ll still be around.

I was by struck something that seemingly cannot be a coincidence, but of which no hints of a relationship or any sort of explanation is given in the Beyond the Mountains of Madness book itself. I can only assume that it is an easter egg-like wild goose chase (or seed for any Keepers who, God help them, want more side adventures), but I must admit it confounds me somewhat.

Specifically I'm talking about the Vredenburgh family, and their propensity to appear throughout the BtMoM storyline. Historically, the first one appears in 1838 in the Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

A sailor, Peter Vredenburgh of New York, is lost overboard on Jan 10th. Keeper’s note: the Grampus was owned by the firm of Lloyd and Vredenburgh, but no connection between the names is revealed. 

— Page 179

And furthermore, the bark Grampus, is owned by Lloyd and (the second) Vredenburgh, although no connection between the two Vredenburghs are ever made in Pym's tale.

The third one appears some time after 1897, when Stanley Edgar Fuchs wants to sell the Pym manuscript, believing it to be fake.

The advertisement was seen by Nathaniel Vredenburgh, a wealthy ship owner in London. Vredenburgh wrote at once to Fuchs offering $500 for the work, but by the time the letter arrived Fuchs had already sold the signature to Percival Lexington.

— Page 326

And the fourth one of course, is Henry Vredenburgh, who comes to captain the Starkweather-Moore Expedition's ship, The Gabrielle, after the unfortunate death of Captain Douglas.

Three or four generations of Vredenburghs, spread out across almost a hundred years, all involved in some way with the Pym story and the Antarctic? Something's fishy.

I asked Chaz Engan, author of Beyond the Mountains of Madness about it, and he confirmed that indeed, there are purposefully plenty of Vredenburgh's, but that there is no actual connection between them; just straws for the investigators to grasp at.

Found this print-resolution map from 1932 of Antarctica published by National Geographic. Perfect for BtMoM (and perfect for the new, concurrent instance I'm starting next week). Thanks to the David Rumsey Map Collection (this 1931 map is also not half-bad).

And no, our game isn't dead, merely in suspended animation as life became too chaotic for planning for a period. As it begins to settle down once again, I expect we'll pick up the scent any week now. Also I do have our previous session recorded already, I just need to find a day or so to edit it in.

Sorry for the long wait, but session 6 is now finally available. Having run out of time, the editing standards are a bit lower this time around, as I'm trailing somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 hours of recordings.

This session sees our expedition arriving on Antarctica, and trouble following them close by as they're awoken in the early morning by an alarm.

The keeper rambles on about session 5 (which he keeps mistakenly referring to as session 6), Trail of Cthulhu vs. Call of Chtulhu, the use of sound effects in games and how to deal with action scenes in general as well as a lead in to session 6.

Having departed Melbourne, The Gabrielle sails south, into troubled waters. A storm breaks on the ship, tearing cargo loose in the holds and the investigators put their lives on the line to save the ship.

The Starkweather-Moore Expedition continues its journey to Australia, while the intrepid investigators try to get to the bottom of the Henning case. While in Melbourne, there's time for some R&R, before they once again head back to sea.

This session's audio was too big to put in one podcast episode, so I split it into two parts, split between Chapter 5 and 6, when the ship departs from Melbourne. Here's a preview from the beginning of the storm, and a look into the madness that is Logic Pro X file (roll for SAN 1/1d6).